


When the Deacon 
Talked in Church 





GERI oR EE ROE ET EN [7 


W. hen the Deacon Talked in Church 





We were not expecting anything unusual that 
day, but we got it just the same. It was a warm 
Sunday in June, and the annual foreign missionary 
sermon was to be preached and the collection 
taken. That didn’t excite us any, for we had 
slept, I may say through both sermon and collec- 
tion many a time before. It wasn’t the sermon 
either, for that didn’t seem so different from us- 
ual, but that somehow it just happened to come 


home to the deacon. So far as I remember, the 
preacher took for his text that verse about “Go 


ye into all the world and preach the gospel to 
every creature,” only he dwelt considerably upon 
the “Go ve.” He said it didn’t say anything about 
_ taking up a collection, but it did say to go, and 
the Lord would never be satisfied until we went. 

Our collections, anyway, he told us, didn’t 
amount to much and always reminded him of the. 
story he had heard of a little boy. It seems the 
little fellow was saving some of the best meat on 
his plate for his dog. ‘The mother noticed that 
and told him to eat that himself, and. after dinner 
he could take what was left on his plate and give 
to the dog. So after dinner he picked up the bits 
of fat, bone, and gristle that were left and took 
them out to the dog, and some one heard him 
say sadly: “I meant to bring you an offering, 
Fido, but I’ve only got:a collection.” 

Well, it did kind of hit home, for most of us 
hadn’t been giving much of a collection, only 


2 


OO 


just enough to look respectable when the plate 
passes. . 

But the preacher went on until he showed us 
that the command, “Go YE,’ meant just what it 
said, that we had to go. He told us that every- 
body had to go. Now, I had always thought that 
there was some special kind of call that comes to 
one here and another there; and when they felt 
that they had to be a missionary. But he said 
that was not in the Bible, that everybody was 
commanded to go unless they had a call to stay 
at home. And even if they had a cali to stay at 
home, they were bound to do their best to find 
a substitute to go for them, and to help every- 
body to go that could. 

Then he just asked: us how we would feel if 
we had no Jesus to go to for forgiveness of our 
sins, for help in our trials, for strength against 
temptation, comfort in sorrow, for guidance in 
perplexity; no Jesus to tell us how to live here, 
and especially no Jesus to tell us about the love 
of God and where our loved ones are when the 
darkness of death shuts down upon them. This 
was what made life so dark for the heathen, and 
in our gifts we were to remember the Lord’s 
command to us and the heathen’s need for us 
to go. 

Then he prayed a bit, and the choir didn’t sing 
any that day, but the organ played a soft volun- 
tary while the collection was being taken. Old 
Deacon Bright got up to pass the plate on his 
side. ‘The old deacon was as fine a man as you 
could meet in a day’s journey, as good a neighbor 
and as honest a man as ever lived—nice two- 


-hundred-acre farm and a fine family, all mem- 


3 


bers of the Church. Jim, the oldest, ran the farm, 
Jack, the second boy, was just ready to go to col- 
lege, and Mary had her diploma as a teacher and 
was studying to be a nurse in the Toronto Hos- 
pital. The mother too was just as nice a woman 
as you could find anywhere. The old deacon had 
been getting considerably deaf of late years, and 
he sat alone in the front pew. I guess he got to 
kind of dreaming over the sermon, for as he rose 
_ to get the collection plate he began to talk to him- 
- self, and to do it out loud: But, bless you, le 
couldn’t hear himself, for you have to shout to 
make him understand anything. 

So, as I said, he took the plate and eda to 
talk. As near as I remember, this is what he 
said: “So that ‘Go ye’ means me and every one 
of us, and this is the Lord’s plate, and what we 
put in is our substitute and shows how much we 
love him and how much we’d have been worth to 
him, seeing we don’t go ourselves.” Then he got 
to the back seat and passed the plate. Now, our 
back seats are always full of young men; and as 
they put their money on the plate, the old man 
went on: “Twenty-five cents from Sam Jones. 
My boy, you’d have been worth more than that 
to the Lord. Ten cents from David Brown, five 
cents from Tom Stone, and nothing from Steve 
Jackson. Forty cents for four boys, and every 
one of them could go too. Theyre worth six 
hundred dollars a year te their fathers and only 
forty cents to the Lord.” 

In the next pew Mr. Allen and his family sat. 
Mr. Allen put on a dollar for the family, and the 
eld deacon moved away, saying, “The price of 
ene of your dinners down town, half of that pair 


4 


ef gloves you wear, almost as much as you spent 
for ice cream last week, a box of candy,” were 
the deacon’s comments as the coins fell from the 
hands of the.Judge and family. 


Then Father John Robb put in a bill rolled up, 
Mrs. Robb put in another, Johnny Robb a little 
envelope bulging with pennies, and Maggie helped 
the baby to put in another little bag; and the old 
deacon said: “God bless them!” 


You may be sure we were all listening by this 
time, though we didn’t dare turn around; and 
there were lots of us mighty glad the deacon 
wasn’t taking up the collection in our aisle. 

John McClay’s pew came. “Worth a dollar a 
year to the Lord and two thousand a year to 
himself,” said the deacon. “Seventy-five dollars 
for a bicycle and twenty-five cents for the Lord 
don’t match, Tommy McClay.” 

“Ah, Miss Eden, it looks queer for a hand with 
a fifty-dollar ring to drop five cents in the plate.” 

“A new house for yourself and an old quarter 
for your Lord, Alex. Bovey?” 

“You take in washing and can give five dollars 
to the Lord! God bless you, Mrs. Dean. What? 
Minnie has some, too, and wee Robbie?” 

“Fifty, seventy-five, eighty-five, ninety. Ah, 
your dinner will cost more than you have given, 
Mr. Steele.” 

“A bright, new dollar bill, and spread out too. 
Mr. Perkins, I am afraid ninety-five cents was for 
show.” 

“A check from Mr. Hay. It will be a good one 
too, for he gives a tenth to the Lord.” 

“Two dollars from you, Harry Atkins, is a 

5 


small gift to the Lord that healed your dear 
wife.” 

“Ah, Miss Kitty Hughes, that fifty cents never 
cost you a thought; and you, Miss Marion, only 
a quarter, when both of you could go and L support 
yourselves.” 

“Five cents from Ae father and a cent from 
each of the family. I guess John Hull and family 
don’t Idve the heathen brothers very: ‘hard.” 

“Ah, Mrs. McRunion, that means a good deal 
to you.. The Lord keep you until you join the 
good man that’s gone.” 

“Charlie Baker, and you too, Effie—I doubt if 
the Lord will take any substitute for you.” 

“Nothing from Mr. Cantile? Heathens at 
home? Perhaps you are one of them.” 

“Five cents, Mr. Donald. I doubt if you'd 
want to put that in the Lord’s hand.” 

Then the old man came to his own pew, and 
his wife put in an envelope. “Ah, Mary, my 
dear, I am afraid that we have been robbing the 
Lord all these years. I doubt we’d have put Jack 
on the plate, wife. Jim, my boy, you’d be worth 
far more than that to the Lord.” Jack and Mary 
sat in the choir. 

So it went from pew to pew till the old man 
came to the front again, and there he stood a 
moment, the plate in his left hand, and after 
fumbling in his vest pocket awhile he said: “No,. 
that isn’t enough, Lord; you ought to get more 
than that; you’ve been very good to me.” So he 
put the plate down, and, taking out an old leath- 
‘ern. wallet, counted out some bills on the plate, 
and said: “I’m sorry, Lord, I didn’t know you 
‘wanted me to go, and Jim will keep mother and | 


“me on the farm, now we're getting old; but I 
won't keep back Jack any longer; and Mary’s 
been wanting to go too, only I wouldn't let her. 
Take them both, Lord.” 


Then while the old man sat down and buried 
his face in his hands Deacon Wise jumped up 
and said: “Dear pastor, we haven’t done our 
duty. Let’s take up the collection again next 
Sunday.” And a chorus of “Amens” came from 
all over the church. 

But the pastor got up, with tears in his eyes, 
and said: “My friends, I haven’t done all I could, 
either. I want to give more next Sunday, and I'll 
give my boy too.” 

Then we sang a hymn as we closed, but it 
sounded different than it ever had before: 


“Love so amazing, so divine, 
Demands my soul, my life, my all.” 


The organist said she believed it went through 
the roof, and I guess the Lord thought so too. 

I think that old deacon felt pretty bad when he 
found that his day-dreaming had been done aloud. 
And one or two felt pretty hard at first, but they 
knew it was true. So that was what started our 
missionary Church, and we’ve kept on ever since. 
There have been fourteen members of our young 
people’s society to go as missionaries in the last 
five years—six of our best young men and eight 
of our brightest girls. 

Jack Bright? He married the organist, and 
they are on the border of Tibet, where his med- 
ical skill is winning a way for Christ. Mary 
Bright married the minister’s son, and they went 
to Africa. 


7 


The old deacon has gone to his rest now. I 
wish we had more like him. Jim keeps his 
mother on'the farm yet, but she’s getting pretty 
feeble. You’re much obliged? O, that’s nothing. 
I’m glad to tell you. You see I have two of my 
own boys that are in the work, one in India and 
the other in China, and another getting ready to 
go. My name? John Donald. You're laughing? 
Yes, I was the one who gave only five cents that 
day. What the old man said about putting it in 
the Lord’s hand struck me. But I hope to give 
the Lord a boy or a girl for every one of those 
five cents. Even my two youngest are talking 
about going already. You see the Lord said, “Co, 
ye,” so we're going. Good-by.—Selected. 





® & HM. B O BOK 246, HARRISBURG, PA, 


